News Release

Intel Nominee “Aided Perpetrators of Killings”

January 7, 2009

ALLAN NAIRN
Currently in New York City, Nairn is available for a limited number of interviews. A noted independent journalist, he runs the weblog “News and Comment.”

Nairn just wrote the piece “Admiral Dennis Blair, Prospective Obama Appointee, Aided Perpetrators of 1999 Church Killings,” which states: “Reports say that President-elect Obama wants to nominate retired Admiral Dennis Blair as the new United States Director of National Intelligence.

“In 1999, in the midst of massacres of East Timor civilians in churches, Admiral Blair gave support to the perpetrators, the armed forces of Indonesia.

“Two days after a massacre at Liquica that left flesh hanging from the church walls, Blair contacted the Indonesian commander, offered him U.S. aid, and according to classified U.S. cables, failed to tell him to stop the attacks.

“Reassured by the evident support from Blair, then the U.S. Pacific Command chief, the Indonesian commander, General Wiranto, escalated the attacks.

“The Indonesian forces subsequently struck the Red Cross and the Bishop’s residence, killing more than a thousand as they went, burning churches and raping nuns.”

BRAD SIMPSON
Simpson is assistant professor of history and international affairs at Princeton University and director of the Indonesia and East Timor Documentation Project at the National Security Archive.

He said today: “The selection of Admiral Dennis Blair as Director of National Intelligence should warm the hearts of those hoping to avoid accountability for Bush administration officials. Blair, who as Commander of the Pacific Fleet ran interference for the Indonesian armed forces as they committed atrocities on a massive scale in East Timor in 1999, is not the kind of change advocates of intelligence reform and human rights need from President-elect Obama.” Simpson is author of the new book Economists with Guns: Authoritarian Development and U.S.-Indonesian Relations, 1960-1968.More Information

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167